Revision Part Two

8: FRAMING + COMPOSITION

Static – Drawn from Paintings

Dynamic – Movement

HEADROOM

BAD BAD GOOD

TALKING ROOM:

BAD BAD GOOD

Exception:

Heated Argument or Long Distance

180 RULE:

Don’t cross the 180 degree line when two characters are in dialog

Exception: Movement in the shot of the camera

FRAMING SIZES:

· Rule of thirds:

Centre of Interest

Importance in the shot (what is it?)

1. FOCUS:

In and out of focus = Pull focus

Change/Shift attention between objects in the scene

9: LIGHTING:

- Overall Lighting Level (KEEP IT UP!)

- Replace standard bulbs with stronger ones (100 W)

- Lighting instruments (Quartz, Redhead)

3 Point Lighting Setup:

Important Elements:

White Balance

Colour Temperature

10: SOUND:

What types of mics:

- Omni-Directional

- Cardoid

- SuperCardoid/Shotgun

- Lav Mics

Microphone Hierarchy

1. Boom

2. Plant – wireless Lav mic

3. Lav

SOUNDTRACK

4 Elements

1. Narration

2. Music

- Practical – in the scene

- Extraneous – edited in

3. Sound Effects

- Foley Artist: Making Sounds

- Foley Walking: Foley Pits

- Hard = Frame accurate

- Soft = Doesn’t have to be synched up

4. Dialogue (ADR) – Automated Dialog Replacement (Looping)

- The replacement of dialog in post-production of a film or video

11. Editing Theory

· Continuity

· Casuality + Motivation

· Eyeline Matches

· Cutting on Action

Parallel Storylines

Relational Editing

Thematic (montage)

Music Videos

Adds

Visual Statement

12. VFX

Visual Effects, Important Today

Revision Time!!

1: Production Process:

- Development – Putting flesh on ideas, treatments, synopsis, viable or not

- Preproduction – Most important, scheduling, 2 to 1 time ratio (2 hour prep, 1 hour shooting)

- Production – Scheduling, starting off: 2 days a 8 hours, 3^rd day off

- Postproduction – Vision -, Audio -, editing, special effects, DISTRIBUTION

2: Visualisation/Conceptualisation

- Work within limitations

- Characters, Props, Locations, keep it to a minimum

- Be Aware:

- Stay informed

- Notice Locations (Notebook)

- Remember stuff from real life

- Genre

3: Plot

- The story

o Essential Elements

§ Believable/Sympathetic lead character

§ The character’s urgent/difficult problem

§ Their attempts to overcome the problem

§ The crisis – the last chance

§ Resolution

4: Screenwriting

- Care about the story, if you don’t, no one will

- Know your characters

- Beginning, Middle, End

- Beware of dialogue, difficult

o 1 SCREENPLAY PAGE = 1 MINUTE OF FOTAGE

Amazing what you can do in paint:P

Formatting

- 12 Point Courier

- Double Spaced

- Single side of page

- Decent margins

- Slugline: INT/EXT WHERE WHEN

- Business: Capitalise char. Names first time they enter scene, Write in presence

- Dialogue: NAME in upper case, Don’t centre text

5: Storyboarding

- Communication tool

- Based on shotlist

6: Production Design

Coming up with the look and the feel of the film

- Research

- Costume

- Sets

- Props

Production Designer: Head of Arts Department

7: Scheduling + Budgeting = BOOOOORIIIIIING!

Week 11: Constantine: A Visual Wonder of Heaven and Hell

I consider visual effects a luxury in today’s film industry. A luxury film makers have to create magnificent features that was hard to think of 20 – 25 years ago. I have my doubts about visual effects actually enhancing the storyline though. But anyhow it makes it easier to create places, like hell, and makes the movie more visually attractive.

When watching the extra disc from Constantine, and how they created the Vermin man, I must say I got stunned by how much time and effort it took to create something that wasn’t really essential to the movie, except for making it more appealing in a visual sense. If I remember correctly, it took them about 12 months to do the whole job, and when I think about it, was it really worth it? Was it necessary? I think of it more as a luxury that they had, and they wanted to do something special, not because it was needed, but because they were capable of doing it and also had the funds to do it.

The creation of hell was another visual effect creation. In the original, hell was planned to be a dark void with an oil-covered floor. Instead they used images from nuclear blast tests to create the crumbling landscape. (IMDB 2008)The colour and creatures was probably made in 3D studios maybe, and then green-screened onto the background.

Another funny fact I found on the trivia site on IMDB was that on the local premiere in Norway’s second largest city, Bergen, the visitor number counted 666. Funny but useless facts, if you are not superstitious.

I really enjoy noir movies these days, especially after the release of The Dark Knight, and now last, Max Payne, because the dark and sinister sides of the characters make them more human. They become more reliable, when the hero is more of an anti-hero than anything else. Good stuff!! I enjoyed Constantine and its beautiful visual effects.

IMDB 2008, Constantine, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360486/

Week 10: Lock Stock and Edit that Baby!!

Alright, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is a movie written and directed by Guy Ritchie, a British director mostly known for his British dark comedy movies. For this weeks blog task we were asked to focus on the editing of the movie. I’m not the best when it comes to spotting editing in movies, but that might have to do with the fact that a good editor’s goal is to conceal it as good as possible. But anyways, I found some things in the movie.

Starting of with the poker game scene, where Eddie (Nick Moran) loses, and he leaves the table and you see the dizzy effects that are done with editing programs. There are also scenes where there is slow motion, fast motion and still-frames, which probably is all done in postproduction. Further research led me to a youtube clip from the end of the movie, the shooting scene inside the house, and before the black guys get there. In this part the editor has used parallel editing using scenes from all the gangs and how they end up there. I’m adding a link to it at the end of the blog. Parallel editing is used in the part of the movie we watched in class as well. Also, looking at the poker game, it switches between that scene, the backroom where Barry the Baptist (Lenny McLean), and the bar scene where the three others are waiting for the game to end. Continuity editing is of course also used at points, but maybe not so often.

The movie is a lot of stories that run parallel with each other until they in the end clash together, so parallel editing would be essential and most productive. Guy Ritchie’s Snatch is also a movie that is based on the same principles, and set up the same way as Lock Stock.

References:

IMDB 2008, Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120735/

Youtube 2008, Lock, stock and two smoking barrels (Funny scene)
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=zNQrgeCYcG4&feature=related

Forum Post: why to like and dislike my movie course

So what is good about this course?

I guess if I told someone that the lectures are just concerned around watching movies, they would say “what the hell?! How can you learn something from that?” Well the fact is that I think we learn more about movies and movie production, by watching them instead of reading about them. Of course theory is needed but the beauty about it is that it evolves around the movies and you won’t understand much of the theory until you see it in action. When I first enrolled in this course I didn’t know we would be doing this every week, and also when I realised that that was what we were doing every week, I asked myself; what is this? I knew from before that you learn a lot about movies by just watching them, but that it was this crucial, I had no idea. It breaks the basic learning about film making down to a level that is fun to engage with and it makes it interesting to learn as well. I would rather go to a two hour lecture and watch a movie, than go to a lecture and take notes and listen to some random lecturer reading of the lecture notes! This course has also helped me by given me skills to start up my own projects, and to understand what traps there are to fall into and what can make the difference between a good movie and a bad one. I don’t know everything, but it gives me enough to start off on my own and do something on my own. It has helped to encourage me to write my own script, and arrange it so when I go back home in November I can get a cast and crew together and start shooting.

Since I haven’t had any other film making classes yet, it’s kind of hard to find something bad about it, especially since I like it so much, but if there was something that could be improved; I guess it could have been feedback from teachers. Sometimes, especially when I’m writing my blog, I don’t feel I’m on the right track. But it is still 4 weeks left of this semester and things might still change. Another problem for me personally has been information. I didn’t know that the lecture notes where put out on learning@griffith, so I was still checking in on the old site because no new information about moving of sites was given or at least I didn’t get it, so I have a lot to catch up on. I might also give a slap on the wrist to those who are managing the room distribution. Since this is a film class maybe they should think about putting it to a room where the equipment works properly so we don’t have to watch movies on outdated projectors which is overly balanced in blue and green, and where the sound output comes from a Boom Blaster? Since students are paying so much money for this course, they could at least give us proper equipment!

Overall I’m satisfied with this course and I can’t wait to start with DV1 and DV2. I really hope they are just as productive as this course.

Week 9: Commando: Flesh And Lighting

Commando is a 20^th century fox production from 1985 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a retired commando “Matrix”, that has to go on a killing spree to save his daughter from an exiled dictator. A most shallow script with cheesy dialogues in good old Arnold style, but that’s not the issue for this week’s blog. Focus this week was to be on the lighting in the movie, and how lighting is used to create emotions and situations in the movie. I have to start off with saying that in the beginning of the movie during Arnold’s little sequence of happiness; a three point lighting setup was used, though the backlight was the sun. To not make Arnold all shadowy in the face during this shot, there has to be both a key light and a fill-light to light up his face. During the movie, Arnold is often in shadows, or at least half of his face is, in some scenes. I think that the different usage of lighting in the happy sequence and the darker ones later in the movie is to show off Matrix’s personality; his dark and bright side. Clearly, when he is in his bright corner, the sun is there and he is trying to smile. When his daughter is taken away, a shadow represents his darker sides in life, and gives an impression that he has fallen back to the beast he used to be when he was a commando. One of the citations in the goofs section of IMDB made me think about the lecture notes and the part about the magic hour; right before it gets dark and right before it gets bright. It says:

“Revealing mistakes: When Matrix and Cindy are about to take off in the plane, the daylight varies: when they are filmed from outside it’s about to get dark, from inside it’s the middle of the night and then it’s about to get dark again.

(IMDB 2008)

“Look! I have a gun!”

It seems to me that you have to be quick when shooting at this hour, and the crew here misjudged the factor of the light outside of the plane and inside. Or maybe they just shot it at different times, where one was in the evening and one was during the night.

It also seems that there are some continuity problems with the daylight in between scenes. Example is the shopping mall where, when they go inside its daylight, and when they exit it is night.

Story-wise, factual-wise and dialog-wise the movie was bad. Wonder why that guy became an actor in the first place!

HOORAH

REFERENCE

IMDB 2008, Commando, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088944/

Week 8: Elephant: Ignoring the truth that is right in front of us

Directed and written by Gus van Sant, Elephant is a movie describing a normal day at school, at an American high school, that turns into a blood bath when two young boys executes their plan to pay back on their fellow students. The blog task for this week was to involve the sound used in the movie, the technical references used, and the dialog in the movie.

(I never understood why she kisses him in that scene)

The soundtrack of the movie is bizarre. At points there is nothing but silence, at others, just ambience and sometimes-weird sounds, which sounds extraterrestrial. In one scene in particular, where Alex and Eric are in the cafeteria, inside the school, you can hear bird sounds. I feel this all is creating a sense of tension, that there is something weird about to happen. When the movie first started, I had no idea that it would end up being a massacre at a high school, but the sounds gave me the feeling that something out of the ordinary was going to happen. The sound was pretty much the only thing that gave me this feeling, because the dialog was pretty useless. It was just random teenage talk, which you can find at any school you go to. The only part of the dialog that gave you a hint was when Alex was writing in his notebook and a girl asks him what he is doing, and he answers that he is working on his plan. The girl answers “for what” where upon Alex answers,” oh, you’ll see” (IMDB 2008).
The technicalities in this movie can be discussed for some time. Especially how Alex and Eric handles the weapons. For instance, in the shed when Alex takes the gun and the clip out of the box and put the clip in the gun and starts firing. And the way they are shooting? They would probably not hit much.
There is also no fire alarm going of even though fires are all over the place. It is also not any police coming to the scene. You would have thought that one of the teachers in the teacher room would have called the police. Or even some of the people that ran outside. Someone would have had a mobile phone or something.
Putting the technical flaws aside, the movie is good because it doesn’t try to analyse why they did it, or even what made the killers so mentally unstable to do something like that.
It was just a normal day where everything went wrong!

Reference:

IMDB 2008, Elephant, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363589/

Week 7: Kill Bill Vol. 2: not as bloody as I expected

Quentin Tarantino is one of those directors that really does leave trademarks in his movies, and also uses a lot of stuff from other movies, and then especially cult movies. One of his most familiar trademarks is probably his framing. Long scenes where the camera follows one character, he likes his characters to open and shut doors, according to IMDB at least, and his frequent use of static cameras.
The first of his trademarks, is also used in KB vol.2, which is when the bride walks down the aisle, and the camera follows her, then draws back, out through the dor and outside the church, where we see the DiVAS standing, ready to enter the church. They enter and start shooting. That whole thing is one long scene, which is all shot in one take. The door-trademark is used multiple times during the movie, for instance when the bride opens the door of Budd’s trailer, the car door, when the bride and Bill is on their way to Pai Mei and the restaurant, just after the bride gets out of her grave, and asks for a glass of water. Why he does this I don’t know, but maybe it is just one of those trademarks, that directors leaves in their movies to be recognised by. Static camera is maybe a more hidden trademark of his, but it is used frequently through KB vol2 as well.
During the fight scene between Elle Driver and the bride, the camera doesn’t move around much. The cameras are in static positions, but it switches often between the angles. Whenever there is a talk scene, the camera rarely moves around, and they are usually focused on one person at a time, and close-ups are often used.
I haven’t seen the whole of the first movie yet, but I was a bit disappointed after watching this one, because I thought it would be much more violence, which I have heard so much about from the first one. I guess I should watch the first one just to get the whole story. Have also heard some rumours that Tarantino is working on a script for a movie situated before the wedding.

Reference:

IMDB 2008, Kill Bill Vol. 2, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0378194

Week 5: Treasures of the World of Film-making?

A short review on National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets:

I actually chose this movie because I have been on the lookout for Three Kings for a looooong time.

Haven’t found it yet but I have picked up some other movies while being on a shopping spree.

I like treasure hunting movies, especially because there are clever nerds on the track doing astonishing things.

National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets, is set up the exact same way as the first movie, the only difference is the story. I had to laugh when I saw the extra disc where they bragged about going all over the world to shoot scenes for this film, while in fact they just went over the atlantic to Paris and London in Europe. But if that is the whole world for Americans, so be it. The movie starts with a story about a major incident in Americas history. An incident that has helped shape the country into what it stands for and believes in today. This time though, the Gates family’s own honour stands on trial. A story comes up about Benjamin Gates’ great great grandfather, and how he supposedly was a headmaster in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The Gates family sets out, along with their associates to claim this an untruth. By doing so they find clues that leads them to the Golden City. A myth that has existed for centuries. A golden city built by native American gold. The movie itself is done well, with a lot of planning in how the scenes are set up and also big scenes that had to be built (Like the golden city).

The movie also contains a car chase in London, which is rarely done, and this one is supposedly the biggest one on tape. It’s a good movie if you like history, mysteries, action and American patriotism because the movie is full of that aswell.

Week 4: Western Sci-Fi, a clash of generations:

Westworld:

Western Sci-Fi movie from 1973

Starring: Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin and James Brolin.

Two regular city people travels to the vacation park created by Delos, known as Westworld.

After a while there weird things starts to happen to the robots in the parks and they go crazy.

Probably a big hit back in the days.

Writer/Director: Michael Crichton

5 elements of plot:

1: Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin)

2: Getting out of Westworld alive

3: Other character, John Blane (James Brolin)

gets killed by the Gunslinger (Yul Brynner)

4: Peter Martin finds the acid in the
underground bunker

5: The smart thinking of Peter Martin
leads to him tricking the Gunslinger and lights him on fire.

He notices that the Gunslinger
can’t see him in between the fires because his imagery is messed up
by the acid

Act 1: Starts with the opening scene
with the advertisment. Ends when the snake bites John Blane. Answers:

Who: Peter Martin and others on
vacation

Where: Westworld, part of the
Delos vacation park.

What: Get the feeling that
malfunctions with the robots is going to be the big confrontation

Act 2: Starts when the snake bites John
Blane, because a confrontation is made between the robots and the
tourists. Ending has of act two has 2 options I think. When John
Blane gets killed, or when Peter Martin finds the acid in the search
for the robot’s weak spot.

Act 3: From the ending of act 2 to the
ending of the movie where Peter Martin sits down and relaxes
seemingly out of it.

An interesting movie. It’s fun watching
the classics, once in a while.

References:

Grey, Duncan, Rewrite of the dialogue in Westworld  script , http://www.putlearningfirst.com/br/westworldscript.html

IMDB 2008, Westworld, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070909/